Innocence Was My First Lie

By Prosee Books

Some families keep secrets. Some secrets keep you.

When Clara returns to the fog-soaked streets of Meadowbrook after her grandmother's death, she expects grief. What she finds instead is a town that flinches at her questions, a mother who speaks only in silences, and a leather-bound diary hidden in a locked attic drawer - one that suggests everything Clara thought she knew about her family was carefully, deliberately wrong.

Margot's diary doesn't offer answers. It offers fragments - cryptic confessions, half-erased names, and whispered warnings that seep through the ink like old wounds reopening. The more Clara reads, the clearer it becomes: her grandmother wasn't just a woman who kept secrets. She was a woman who paid a price for them. And now, that price has been passed down.

Armed with charcoal, courage, and a stubborn refusal to let the fog win, Clara begins to pull at the threads - through hushed conversations in harbor caf s, wary elders with iron-hard stares, and the boy she once trusted who now warns her to stop. Every answer leads to a darker question. Every truth disturbs something that was never meant to breathe daylight.

But Clara is done mistaking silence for peace.

Part family mystery, part coming-of-age reckoning, Shadows Over Meadowbrook is a haunting, atmospheric novel about the stories we inherit, the lies we're raised to protect, and the fierce, fragile courage it takes to finally tell the truth.

Perfect for fans of: Where the Crawdads Sing - The Secret History - Big Little Lies

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GY28WGP8
• ISBN13: 9798232687083
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Prosee Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"